Labour’s hypocrisy over tax-avoiders is staggering

SO much for the evils of capitalism. Labour, under Jeremy Corbyn, wants to smash the system, squeeze the rich till the pips squeak, come down like a ton of bricks on tax-avoiders, force the rich to pay their due just like everyone else. Unless it involves Labour itself of course.

Of all instances of Labour’s rank hypocrisy this one is hard to beat: the Paradise Papers have revealed that it is not just the great and the good that are making use of (totally legal) offshore funds – Labour is also in it up to its neck.

Two Labour-led councils have avoided paying more than £12million in UK stamp duty by putting property purchases through offshore companies, while Labour’s own headquarters is rented from a tax-exempt property trust fund based in Jersey.

And if all that were not enough, shadow chancellor John McDonnell receives a Westminster Council pension drawn from a fund managed by a Guernsey-based firm.

Will McDonnell pay the money back? Don’t hold your breath. And there seems to have been a strange silence from the Dear Leader himself, the self-appointed champion of the people who just two days ago was demanding an apology from the Queen for using offshore investments.

Will Mr Corbyn be offering an apology on behalf of the Labour Party? And more to the point is there a more sanctimonious, self-satisfied and above all hypocritical group of people in the country today than Jeremy Corbyn and his crew?